Fire and Funk

Food nerds often cite 1996’s Big Night among their favorite food-themed movies, in part for the familiar conflict it presents: Immigrant restaurateurs struggling to sell a very traditional, respectful version of their native cuisine, while a rival thrives with a dumbed-down, Americanized version. Sometimes the locals are slow to catch on to what makes the original more thrilling, to appreciate novel ingredients and flavors and textures. So we’re gratified to see traditional, regionally diverse versions of Thai cuisine gaining traction at places like Khao Hom, Kor Tor Mor and Kala, where chefs aren’t afraid to throw the offal, fermented funk and chili heat. Dakzen, a new spot in Davis Square, is the latest reflection of this welcome trend.

This modest little storefront features a split-level room with 26 low-slung table seats plus another four counter seats, set in a spare, brightly lit space of sunshine-yellow and white walls. You scribble your name on the waitlist by the door. A server takes your order tableside and presents you with the check; there’s that awkward moment where you have to enter their tip while they watch. They serve your food, but you help yourself to napkins and utensils and bus your own table. Fine dining it ain’t, but you know your money is going into the kitchen.

Hefty entrees sans broth include pad see ew ($9 or $11, depending on choice of protein), a simple but satisfying pile of wide, flat rice noodles stir-fried in a chili-hot, soy sauce-based gravy with Chinese broccoli. Khao grapow with crispy pork belly and a fried egg ($13) was another straightforward winner, serving chunks of chicharron-like slices of skin-on pork belly in a garlicky, fiery sauce punched up with intensely fragrant holy basil, plus a pile of good jasmine rice.

Desserts include pang yen ($6), a pyramid of shaved ice doused with sweetened condensed milk and either red or green syrup, both yielding very sweet, pastel-shaded results atop a dull foundation of Wonder Bread. We preferred the enormous slab of kanom moh kang ($6), a coconut-milk custard given almost bread-pudding-like heft with taro. Soft drinks include bottles of sweetened soy milk ($3) and excellent housemade Thai iced tea and lime iced tea ($4). If you like your Thai food in the American suburban style—bland, sugary and bowdlerized, with nary a whiff of shrimp paste or fish sauce—this place probably isn’t for you. But if you’re ready to embrace the fiery, funky, prismatic charms of the real regional-Thai deal, you need to get to Dakzen and get your street noodles on. ◆